When did putting husbands down become a national sport?

[Kosenrufugirl]

I was listening to a mainstream radio station the other day when the DJ publicly reciting a mistake her husband had made recently. She invited other women to join in and a short while later she read out their stories too. I am just wondering... I wouldn't behave like this to a work colleague no matter how much I might be annoyed with their behaviour. I would most certainly not be publicly humuliated like this by anyone without taking it up to the Line Manager. It's disturbing me why this behaviour seems to be acceptable towards husbands and partners. What do others think?

happily married to a man who isn’t a prick.

unfortunately my anecdotal experience is that the majority of men are lazy ‘tell me what you need help with!!!’ doughnuts at best and bastards at worstz

(i got very lucky. But I didn’t actively date British men as the double burden on women is massively cultural here.)

But yeah, go ahead and think that we’re all miss havisham decaying in a chair.

Altho i agree with you, Op Mn is not the place to start a thread in support of men. A lot of mumsnetteers hate men simply because they are men...

I coukd never be ina relationship where there is no basic respect for each other. I coukd never talk badly about my partner if I was sharing a story it wouldn't be put in a way to make him look bad or useless.

I inwardly cringe when work colleagues do this about their partners. I'm like why would u speak that way about them.

Yes, I imagine the ‘mistakes’ were weaponised incompetence in forgetting to pick children up or domestic tasks, not anything that damaged their capacity reputation in the workplace (though I’ve often seen senior men in my field be ‘unable to use Exel’ or deliberately be unsympathetic in pastoral situations, meaning that less senior women get landed with all students in need situations, and the admin staff end up with a much bigger load from male academics than female.

On a national Irish radio show years ago, a woman wrote in describing how her husband left his dirty laundry on the floor, never got up in time to help get kids to school, ignored the bins, left his dishes on the side, etc - he read out the letter, hugely sympathetic, saying how dreadful it was - then the producer said ‘we have her on the line, she has called in.’ IT WAS THE DJ’s WIFE. Superb radio.

Yeah, women should be very careful of mens fragile egos. Completely right. Blooming nagging women

Incidentally I think I heard this on the radio - it wasn't just "a pair of shoes" was it? I thought it was her very expensive OOAK designer shoes....

My point is if a colleague at work did the same, I would have found a private space to talk it over and get to the bottom of it. Am I giving too many or too unclear instructions? Is it something in my manner of giving instructions that they find objectionable and therefore choose to ignore me? Did they have other competing tasks on their time? I would also be listening very carefully to their answers to design the way forward.

Got it, so it's up to women to manage their husbands.

There really is no need to take everything so literally or seriously.

Women don’t moan about minor grievances with their spouse because they “despise men”

Its a tongue in cheek ribbing of a person’s daft mistake.

Im sure the dj’s husband isn’t scarred because his wife exaggerated her exasperation with him for comic effect. It’s hyperbole.

Thats all this is- an attempt at humour. It’s actually indulging men to laugh about their lack of thought/effort in undertaking menial tasks.

Bingo.

@Urcheon, That men do not make mistakes and so it is weaponised incompetence where as women are fallible would seem to be very sexist coming from men. Of course, this is self-serving, but being in a relationship where I am understood to be fallible in the same way a woman is seems healthy to me.

How could she be 100% sure she said "blue shoes" and not "those shoes" without talking to him? And even if she did say it correctly and he didn't hear .... is moaning about his mistake in front of thousands listeners makes it the right approach?

Youre winding us up now.

You'd treat your husband this way? Like he was an apprentice and you his superior? How infantilising, and quite frankly tedious.

Give me a man who can admit fault, take some piss taking from his wife and laugh about himself all day long.

Yes we do

OMFG! Because people know what they said and don't need other people to confirm it for them. Newsflash - women are just as good at remembering as men!
Does your husband gaslight you a lot by "correcting" you?

It certainly would if there were any evidence at all that women who function with confidence and dexterity in the workplace, assimilating difficult material, absorbing new techniques/concepts/tech, managing staff etc routinely found themselves stumped by following a recipe, unable to operate the washing machine or ‘forgetting’ to collect their children from childcare/supervise homework/dress toddlers appropriately for cold weather.

I notice it often and have done for years. I always think that if whatever the ‘joke’ was is reversed and it was a woman who was being mocked, there would be outrage.

Stuff like jokes on the radio I can’t get wound up about, as pp said men have been making ball and chain jokes for centuries. I wouldn’t do it, because it would upset my husband, and I really don’t like public humiliation in general.

what I don’t like is when “girls night” is code for “let’s have a few drinks and bitch about our husbands failings all evening”. If he’s that bad, get rid.

I guess it depends how it was said and what people writing in said.

My husband and I always take the mickey out of each other in jest.

But it's not an equal comparison, which has been explained several times on this thread 😇

@MsMando

"Talking husbands: because there’s an imbalance of power which means all things, in this case, aren’t equal.

Women have been insulted, humiliated and mocked for centuries as a gender and made to feel very much the “lower” gender. They still are in many countries worldwide.

So men as a gender can afford to be put down a peg or two. They’re not the ones fighting to be seen and heard or taken seriously."

+++++

Most reasonable people in Western society would agree that there should be equality between men and women.

In the case of this Radio show equality would mean a phone in where mistakes by both husbands or wives were ridiculed or perhaps much better no such phone humiliating husbands or wives. But a phone in that only humiliates husbands is not equality.

I do not accept the argument that "it's all a bit of fun" or "cant you take a joke" firstly because humiliation of a particular group of society is not humour it is bullying and prejudice. Secondly it reminds me too much of the male counter argument to sexism of "OK so I did grab her breasts or say a sexist comment but I was only joking - can't you take a joke?" It's not funny and it's not a joke.

The argument that men can afford to be now "taken down a peg or two" because past injustices or current injustices in other countries / cultures doesn't seek to achieve equality it is actually seeking revenge. This is not helpful.

To ridicule a man or husband because his father or grandfather was sexist or because another man or husband in a different culture or country is still sexist sends the cause of equality backwards not forwards.

All this achieves is resentment particularly in younger males that in seeking to address past injustices the pendulum has now swung too far the other way and that the current young male generation is not guilty for injustices of previous male generations.

You may say who cares about young male resentment, but there are plenty of bad faith actors such as Andrew Tate looking to capitalise on this resentment. It also turns fair minded men away the concept of equality.

All of which sends the cause of feminism and equality in society further backwards.

As a sex, they have been, put down, abused as a sex and seen as lower than men, because of their sex.

I would say a dose of diplomacy could go a big way whether you are talking to a girlfriend, a work colleague or a husband. By the way, I have no issues choosing a good moment and asking my senior to come to a private room to have a chat about how their behaviour made me feel. We all do it, men and women because we work in a very stressful job and we need to function as a team. There is no room for incivility at work and I try to apply the same standards at home. I am not always successful but I always apologies if I have been uncivil to my husband.

Well, there’s your problem, isn’t it? Men have been doing it for hundreds of years and there has been absolutely no public outcry - women drivers, mother in law jokes, blonde jokes, sexual innuendo, ‘whore in the bedroom, cook in the kitchen’ comments, men whistling at women in the street as though they were dogs being called to harness. Thankfully it has largely gone away in public at least, though there are many cases where women still have to battle overt and covert misogyny - there is still an old boys network on many occupations, some men still expect women to do all the domestic labour and think they’re doing their part because they mow the lawn and take the bins out once a week. When I read on here about women going away for a few days and feeling they have to meal prep or pack luggage for their presumably able bodied husbands it makes my blood boil. We treat men like idiots sometimes and it’s not fair on us, or them.

@Kosenrufugirl "How could she be 100% sure she said "blue shoes" and not "those shoes" without talking to him?"

I can't. If she didn't, the adult response would be a call to ask "Which shoes did you mean?" Rather than just taking a random guess!

Why would you need to do a full root cause analysis for learnt helplessness? Just asking.

I don’t want to guide a full grown arse man through the mysteries and wonders of common sense. I do that with children.

The example you gave, the DJ’s husband, that’s just being silly, shit happens, it’s a good story. If he has form for it, let me tell you from experience that some men fuck it up on purpose so they don’t get asked anything ever again. And that grates. And it serves him right, you don’t display this level of pettiness without consequences.

I did divorce one like that and found someone who sees we’re running out of butter and just bloody goes and buys it without being told, reminded or having it pointed at.